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Rock Fish

A baked whole fish layered with tomatoes, parsley, leek, breadcrumbs, and butter, seasoned with sea salt and cooked in water or beef gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 759 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Rock Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Scale, clean, and remove the heads and fins from the fish.

  2. Split the fish from end to end and remove the backbones.

  3. Chop the tomatoes, parsley, and leek.

  4. Sprinkle salt over each piece of fish.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer fish in a pie dish with some chopped tomato mixture and bread crumbs.

  2. Repeat layers until the dish is filled.

  3. Top with bits of butter and a generous amount of bread crumbs.

  4. Pour a little water or beef gravy into the dish.

  5. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until crisp and brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rock fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky layers once the backbones are removed.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that flavour the layers as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping and absorb juices between the layers.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the top crisp and brown in the oven.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, tomato, leek, bread, butter, beef):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, tomato, leek, bread, butter, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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